Pakistan

Political and Economic History Since 1947

Omar Noman, Noman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136144028
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1988. This is the first serious academic study of the economic and political development of Pakistan between 1947, the birth of the State, and 1990. First published in 1988 as The Political Economy of Pakistan, this edition has been updated to cover General Zia's death and the start of Benazir Bhutto's government. This book provides an excellent introduction to Pakistan and is of importance to anyone interested in the economic and political development of an Asian country.

Part One

FROM PARTITION TO CIVIL WAR. 1947-1971

“Suppose this was a realistic novel! Just think what else I might have to put in … the longago Deputy Speaker who was killed in the National Assembly when the furniture was flung at him by elected representatives … or about the issue of Time magazine (or was it Newsweek) which never got into the country because it carried an article about President Ayub Khan's alleged Swiss bank account … or about genocide in Baluchistan … or about the attempt to declare the sari an obscene garment; or about the extra hangings — the first for twenty years — that were ordered purely to legitimise the execution of Mr Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto; or about why Bhutto's hangman has vanished into thin air. Realism can break a writer's heart. Fortunately, however, I am only telling a sort of modern fairy tale, so that's all right; nobody need get upset, or take anything I say too seriously. No drastic action need be taken either. What a relief!”

Salman Rushdie, Shame

“We have been looking at the hard cases — the dark side of the moon. This is in the established tradition of social study. Only the man who finds everything wrong and expects it to get worse is thought to have a clear brain.”

J. K. Galbraith

Chapter One

1947 — 1958 … The Disenchantment With Freedom.

It is ironic that Pakistan continues to be plagued by a controversy regarding the precise role for religion in its politics. The country is haunted by the ideological schizophrenia permeating the Pakistan Movement. The demand for the partition of Indian territory into two nation-states was based upon the notion that Muslims and Hindus constituted two distinct nations. This communal division implied a theologically determined divergence in social structure. Muslims could refer to a holistic conception of society outlined in the Quran. Economic, political and legal institutions delineate vectors within a comprehensive ideological matrix. Jinnah's rhetoric often conformed to this vision: “Islam is our guide and complete code of life”.¹

Rhetoric apart, Jinnah, in common with most of the Muslim League leadership, had only tangential contact with religion. Secular, liberal thought had exercised a strong influence on Jinnah, who was a leading advocate for the separation of religion and politics.² Indeed, Jinnah categorically refused to commit the Muslim League to basing the Constitution of Pakistan on Islamic principles.³ Such ambivalence regarding the precise form a separate Muslim state will take was also reflected in public pronouncements of Iqbal, the philosopher most closely associated with the Pakistan Movement. Addressing the Muslim League at Allahabad, he tried to reassure Hindus and Sikhs with the promise that they should not fear “that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states”.⁴

It is not surprising, therefore, that the creation of Pakistan was opposed by a large section of India's Muslim religious leaders.⁵ Maududi, the leading Muslim theologian in India, raised the obvious question: if the intention was to create a secular state in Pakistan, then what was the harm in a united India? Why should Muslims pay a heavy price in terms of life and property for the establishment of another secular state?⁶ These religious leaders had two interrelated reservations regarding Pakistan. One was the fear that the ‘westernised'élite had no intention of creating a theocracy. Secondly, the religious leaders would have no political authority in Pakistan, and therefore had little to gain by supporting the partition of India.

There were obvious contradictions in the demand for a separate, but secular, Muslim state. However, the protection of the Muslim élite's interests did not require the creation of a theocracy. The subtle, but important, distinction was emphasised by the penetrating observation, “The Pakistan Resolution (1940) can be explained without reference to Islam, though not without reference to Muslims”.⁷

The demand for Pakistan had grown out of an environment in which the British were extending indigenous élite participation in the administration of India. The Muslim component of this élite, comprising mostly landlords and professional groups such as lawyers, sought positive discrimination through provisions such as a reserved quota in the public services and the legislature.⁸ It is, however, important to emphasise that the Muslim élite did not consist of a homogenous bloc. Ninety-five million Muslims, 25% of the population, were spread across India. Of considerable significance to the nature of the Pakistan Movement was the division between those Muslims who lived in Muslim majority provinces and those who lived in areas where Muslims were in a minority. The core of the Muslim League leadership came from the latter group⁹ — Muslims from the northern United Provinces (UP). They feared marginalisation by the numerically dominant Hindus at the centre of a unitary structure of government advocated by the Congress Party.¹⁰ There were two reasons for the disproportionate power and influence exercised by this section of the Muslim élite. The first was the legitimacy, conferred by their historical pedigree, as descendants of the Mughal administration which was governing India at the time of the British conquest. The second related to their physical proximity to the central government, a position which gave them an advantage over provincially based leaders. Pakistan appealed more to the insecure UP Muslims than it did to those who lived in Muslim majority areas, a tendency recognised by the penultimate viceroy, Wavell: “The Pakistan idea is stronger in the Muslim minority provinces than in the Pakistan provinces”.¹¹

The reason for the difference in perspective, within the Muslim élite was obvious. In some of the Muslim majority provinces, such as the NWFP, Hindu domination was not a serious threat, since the Muslims had an overwhelming majority.¹² The bulk of the Muslim population, however, lived in the provinces of Bengal and Punjab, both containing a substantial Hindu or Sikh population. The Muslim élite of these provinces was well represented in the state governments formed after the 1937 provincial elections.¹³ In their majority provinces, Muslims were “already well on top and with a little forbearance could easily placate the minorities … they would gain little or nothing by Pakistan”.¹⁴ Indeed, the Muslim élite of Punjab and Bengal was initially hostile to the division of their provinces on the basis of religion.¹⁵ In order to get the support of these regional élites, the UP Muslims at the centre had to make substantial concessions regarding provincial autonomy. Consequently, the Muslim League's proposals for grouping the Muslim majority provinces were heavily weighted in favour of state governments. Similarly, it was not surprising that the Pakistan Resolution committed itself to ‘sovereign and autonomous’ states vesting limited powers to a weak centre. This provincial bias is ironic in view of subsequent developments in Pakistan. Eventually, both Punjab and Bengal had to be divided when India was partitioned. The relatively prosperous areas of each province remained in India. The Punjabi Muslims were subsequently compensated by a share in political power. For the Bengalis, the partition of their province was an unmitigated disaster. The part of Bengal which Pakistan inherited consisted of overpopulated rural areas with a bleak economic future.¹⁶ Such an unfavourable demarcation was not offset by political power for Bengali Muslims. Indeed, the denial of a share in government to the Bengalis led to the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971.

The partition of India along communal lines was not the only option pursued by the Muslim League. On the contrary, there was a great deal of ambiguity surrounding the Muslim demand for representational parity. Even up to 1946, Jinnah had not abandoned his quest for a constitutional structure which could accommodate Muslim interests within a united India. In this context it is worth noting that the Muslim League accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan for a confederal India, just a year before Partition.¹⁷ Jinnah's acceptance of the principle of a united India provoked anxiety amongst his followers regarding the Muslim League's true intentions vis-à-vis Pakistan.¹⁸ The Congress Party, however, refused to accept the Plan's provisions for a weak and impotent centre. Neither Nehru nor Gandhi was willing to preserve the unity of India at the expense of accepting what to them appeared to be a chaotic, fissiparous and unworkable political structure.

The Muslim League had pushed itself into a tight corner. Jinnah was a staunch constitutionalist who had been forced into mass politics, a role which he did not relish.¹⁹ The Muslim League had required a demonstration of popular Muslim support to strengthen its negotiating position. The rallying of mass support, however, had a dynamic of its own. It had two consequences. First, religious passions had to be aroused if communalism was to form the basis of mobilisation. The operational logic of such a scheme encouraged and nurtured communal hatred. The brutal and violent consequences could not be controlled by secular constitutionalists. Second, for the Muslim masses, the goal of Pakistan acquired the symbol of a promised land. Its creation was to be a source of liberation for the underprivileged. The Muslim League promised a just, egalitarian economic and social order.²⁰ The expectations generated by such pledges explains, to a large extent, mass support for the Pakistan Movement. In a rigidly repressive society, Muslim underprivileged classes saw the prospect of economic and social liberation in Pakistan.

The appeal to liberty was, however, perverted through its adulteration with rhetoric which portrayed another religious community as the barrier to this freedom. To suggest a sinister equation between repression and communal division was provocative. It was a dangerous game and one over which Jinnah and the Muslim League had lost control. The outcome of the passions that were unleashed is unfortunately only too familiar to bear repetition. Thus, what had started as a constitutional struggle for the protection of the Muslim élite had culminated in a mass movement for a separate nation-state. In 1947 Pakistan was propelled into existence, its leaders uncertain of what lay ahead, its followers clinging to visions of a just social order.

To what extent religion would determine politics remained, as we argued earlier, undefined. However, once the territorial truncation along religious boundaries was completed, the Ulema (religious leaders) seized the opportunity to exercise pressure on the secular rulers of the new country. Their demand for a Muslim theocratic state was, after all, perfectly logical for a nation-state created on the basis of religion. In early 1948, the Ulema drafted a detailed proposal for the establishment of a Ministry of Religious Affairs. The ministry would not only regulate and encourage religious institutions but would also function as a body which monitored the conduct of Civil Servants. The views of the Ulema, regarding the form of a theocratic state, were summarised in the report of the Board of Talimat-e-islamia.²¹ Their conception of an Islamic state was based on the model of the classical Muslim Caliphate. Since God was the ultimate sovereign, the legitimacy of temporal rulers rested upon their claim as implementors of divine will. Accordingly it was required that the head of state, a Muslim male to be elected for life, be well versed in the laws of the Sharia derived from the Quran and Sunnah.²² Similarly since God, not the people, was the sovereign, legislation was circumscribed by the requirement of conformity with the Sharia. A ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• PART ONE: FROM PARTITION TO CIVIL WAR 1947-71
• PART TWO: AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM UNDER BHUTTO, 1971-77
• PART THREE: MILITARY RULE UNDER ZIA, 1977-88
• Bibliography
• Index